Gary Gygax R.I.P.

[RadicalTurnip]

Pretty much all but 1 of my D&D friends hates 4e, we bought the books they day it came out and I was running a campaign within two weeks, but I didn't like it. Magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. At all.

My primary gripe is that I think of D&D as a fantasy world simulation. 4e was not a simulation, it was a battle game with a few extra things thrown in, if I wanted battles, I could play Warhammer. My players (and I when I play) have a hard enough time roleplaying and not just metagaming. 4th Edition makes that even more difficult.

4e is great for its simplicity, but I don't want simple, I want realistic (I know, elves, dwarfs, magic, etc), 4e feels like there's a disconnect between the real world and the battle world, and I don't like that. Just my 2cp.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by RadicalTurnip

Pretty much all but 1 of my D&D friends hates 4e, we bought the books they day it came out and I was running a campaign within two weeks, but I didn't like it. Magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. At all.

My primary gripe is that I think of D&D as a fantasy world simulation. 4e was not a simulation, it was a battle game with a few extra things thrown in, if I wanted battles, I could play Warhammer. My players (and I when I play) have a hard enough time roleplaying and not just metagaming. 4th Edition makes that even more difficult.

4e is great for its simplicity, but I don't want simple, I want realistic (I know, elves, dwarfs, magic, etc), 4e feels like there's a disconnect between the real world and the battle world, and I don't like that. Just my 2cp.

Right on the money. 4e is not a rpg - its tabletop gamin.
Wizards more or less directly said
a). they want to simplify to attract wow-ish gamers.
b). they wanted to simplify to attract younger gamers.

Did they succeed - more or less. A sigificant percentage of the grognards switched to pathfinder.

I'm not much of a vancian person. But my favorite edition is still 2nd. A lot of the problems in 3e sprang from the changes to gygax's design.

Standardizing exp resulted in very powerful wizards, for example.
Still, if you wanted a "cugel the clever" type milieu.. hard to argue against dnd 2e. And there were a lot of good productsin its time - mind flayers, vault of the drow.

still I prefer gurps, fantasy hero, pathfinder, dnd 3.5, dnd 2.0 and mowing the grass to dnd4.0

[Knai]

Of course, Cugel and similar were tricksters first and foremost, and it is what they were mentally that defined them so much. Meaning either they are universal to basically any system without mental stats getting in your way, or functional best in a system where social actions actually get some focus. I would consider Burning Wheel far better for them than D&D ever can be.

Ultimately, I don't particularly like Gygax's work. But what I love in fantasy, what I love in gaming, next to none of that would exist without him. Without Gygax (and Arnerson, both of whom are deceased) there would be no tabletop roleplaying industry, there would be drastically different mechanics in nearly every video game, and it hugely influenced literature. And for that, I salute the man, and his partners way back in the day. The order of the stick tribute did him well.